With the development of a mobile data service, a wireless local area network (WLAN) technology becomes a widely used wireless access technology, and various major telecommunications carriers list a wireless local area network as a key service to expand. To attract existing users and facilitate charging, carriers all introduce a web authentication manner. That is, after a user accesses a wireless local area network hotspot of a carrier, the user will be directed to a web authentication page; and after the user enters an account and a password on the web authentication page and authentication is performed by a network server successfully, the user can use a wireless local area network provided by the carrier.
However, although web authentication is beneficial to charging performed by a carrier for usage of a wireless local area network, a user needs to enter an account and a password on a web authentication page each time when the user accesses the wireless local area network. For the user, such a complex and repetitive operation is meaningless, and wastes a lot of time.